Now, add to that list Black’s belief, as reported by the Loudoun Times-Mirror, that the Environmental Protection Agency – set up by Republican Richard Nixon, by the way – is supposedly “as close to Bolshevik communists as anybody you will ever meet…They are extreme to the Nth degree.” Black also flat-out lies about the Clean Power Plan (CPP), falsely claiming that under it, “electric bills for individuals and businesses will go up 20 percent” (in fact, numerous analyses have shown that power bills will either stay roughly flat or actually go DOWN under the CPP). Black also dismisses global warming – which 99% of climate scientists agree is real, dangerous, and is caused by man’s burning of fossil fuel – as a “theology,” “kind of hokey,” and “silly from the outset.” He repeats a Big Lie favorite of crazy climate science deniers, that supposedly temperatures haven’t increased “in the past 17 years.” And he even manages to dismiss the booming clean energy industry, which has seen prices fall to the point that wind and solar are now cheaper than fossil fuels in many parts of the country, as “wind and solar scams.”

The bottom line: Dick Black is an extremist nutjob who has no business holding any public office, let alone State Senator. Fortunately, Democrats have an excellent alternative in Dr. Jill McCabe, who I urge everyone to support with volunteer time, donations, your vote (if you live in the district), etc. Come November, can we PLEASE say goodbye to Dick Black from Virginia public office once and for all?

P.S. Also note that Black was spouting these extreme and crazy views…yep, speaking of corrupt, at “an Americans for Prosperity grassroots event” (that’s an oxymoron by the way). Note that Americans for Prosperity is “a right-wing political advocacy group founded by billionaire brothers David and Charles Koch, the owners of Koch Industries,” and other fossil fuel interests. Not surprisingly, given that solar and wind are starting to eat fossil fuels’ lunch, that industry is not exactly friendly to clean energy, or to science which definitively proves that the product it peddles is destroying the planet…